Best early game rescue vehicle?

[J3FF97]

Hey everyone~

I got into KSP about a week ago, and I finally managed to land Jebediah on the Mun, YAY! He only has 2.2 units of liquidfuel left.. So he's stuck... With a lot of science that I really need and can use...

So, With the amount of tech I currently have unlocked (picture included) What would be the best rescue vehicle?

I have made several versions of it. It has to lift off, land on Mun (preferably near Jeb, otherwise, Walking/flying by RCS is okay ), come back to Kerbin, and land safely. This does mean that it needs at least 2 command pods.

I hope anyone can help me

~J

[Gordon861]

Leave him there for a bit, use other craft to get science from Kerbal and orbit and returns from Mun/Minimus until you have the science to build something bigger to pick up Jeb.

[Alshain]

Leave him there for a bit, use other craft to get science from Kerbal and orbit and returns from Mun/Minimus until you have the science to build something bigger to pick up Jeb.

Pretty much this. The only other option early game is to stack a probe (or a second command pod) onto a command pod and land near him, taking the science and leaving the old ship. You just have to make sure one pod is empty.

[weezl]

Pretty much this. The only other option early game is to stack a probe (or a second command pod) onto a command pod and land near him, taking the science and leaving the old ship. You just have to make sure one pod is empty.

^^ this. My early rescue vehicles use a Mk 1 command pod with a probe mounted on top of them so that I can launch them without a Kerbal on board. I'm assuming your new here.. so keep this in mind:

probe cores require electricity to use.. so carefully test your new ship before sending it out.. specifically your goal should be to understand what types of actions expend electrical energy so that you can plan for how much battery you need and the amount of solar panels required to run/recharge your craft..

Good luck!

[cantab]

You have a probe core and solar panels. So I'd just tweak your current design a bit. Ditch the science gear to save weight, swap the nose-mounted chute for a Stayputnik, add radial chutes for your landing back at Kerbin, and optionally put more fuel on so you don't run out again. Don't forget to leave the pod empty!

Sending a robotic rescue mission has the advantage that if the rescue mission goes wrong you don't end up with MORE stranded Kerbals!

[J3FF97]

Thanks for the answers guys ^.^ Yeah, I'm a newbie at these things, I still don't know a lot about "good" and "efficient" rockets and landers I thought this would've been enough, but unfortunately, nope.

@Cantab, I'm gonna try that, I'll keep you guys up to date if it has worked or not.

[Alshain]

Thanks for the answers guys ^.^ Yeah, I'm a newbie at these things, I still don't know a lot about "good" and "efficient" rockets and landers I thought this would've been enough, but unfortunately, nope.

@Cantab, I'm gonna try that, I'll keep you guys up to date if it has worked or not.

Early landing attempts will take more fuel. Once you get skilled you will start to learn when to slow down, how to control your throttle, and how to better design your crafts and you will find yourself using less fuel. I've only been playing a few months and have mastered landing on the mun (and minmus is easier!), so it won't take long if you keep trying.

[stibbons]

When that happened to me I had just enough fuel to lift off and get a low orbit around the Mun. So, back at KSP I took an identical craft, slapped a Stayputnik probe core on top, and sent it up unmanned. Did a rough intercept, sent Jeb on a 20km spacewalk from his stricken vessel to the rescue ship, then turned it around and burned hard for home.

[Roastduck]

Also, if you haven't already, send a couple of missions to a low polar orbit around Kerbin, Mun, and Minmus. With some patience, this will let you get EVA reports from "space just above" all the biomes, which can be transmitted back for 100% their science value. TONS of science to be had here that will help you unlock new parts for a rescue

[Qbr12]

I'm in a similar predicament. I managed to get Jeb on the Mun, and into a stable orbit around the Mun, but he has no fuel to direct himself home. I was hoping to send some sort of rescue vehicle to bring him back home (or even just get his ship into a decaying orbit around Kerbin, as his chutes and landing gear are all still operational), but I'm afraid my current tech level is woefully inadequate. I was hoping someone could point me to a guide, or explain how to do something like this.

Here's my tech tree, my current rocket design, and poor Jeb's stranded ship.

https://imgur.com/a/HjahD

[Claw]

I'm in a similar predicament. I managed to get Jeb on the Mun, and into a stable orbit around the Mun, but he has no fuel to direct himself home. ...

If your ship had plenty of fuel to land on the Mun and make it back to orbit, then you can comfortably launch a second one as a rescue ship.

Just make sure the capsule is empty and that you have a probe core attached somewhere, with enough batteries and/or solar panels. You can always jettison it after rendezvous and Kerbal transfer.

If your Mun lander has science on board, then make sure you grab that when you transfer your kerbal over. Right click and "take data" from all your experiments and the capsule.

[Qbr12]

If your ship had plenty of fuel to land on the Mun and make it back to orbit, then you can comfortably launch a second one as a rescue ship.

Just make sure the capsule is empty and that you have a probe core attached somewhere, with enough batteries and/or solar panels. You can always jettison it after rendezvous and Kerbal transfer.

If your Mun lander has science on board, then make sure you grab that when you transfer your kerbal over. Right click and "take data" from all your experiments and the capsule.

I guess what I'm confused about is the process of getting Jeb out of the old orbiting craft and into a new one without flying off into space. My only ladder tech right now is the ladder system planted on the ship, not the extendable one. My worry is that even if i somehow manage to get the new ship lined up with the old one, at the exact same speed and orbit, I don't have a method of moving him into the new ship.

[cantab]

Kerbals have their little jetpacks. When you're on EVA and *not* on a ladder, press R to activate it, then W/S go forward and back, A/D left and right, and Shift/Control up and down.

Be patient and make little taps, don't overdo it or you'll fly off at speed. And know that if a target ship or its marker doesn't appear to be moving sideways, that means you're heading straight at or straight away from it.

[Gordon861]

Kerbals have their little jetpacks. When you're on EVA and *not* on a ladder, press R to activate it, then W/S go forward and back, A/D left and right, and Shift/Control up and down.

Be patient and make little taps, don't overdo it or you'll fly off at speed. And know that if a target ship or its marker doesn't appear to be moving sideways, that means you're heading straight at or straight away from it.

And don't forget F5 (quicksave) before leaving your ship, hold-F9 to quickload.

[Qbr12]

Well now i know.

...But before I didn't know that so I sent an unmanned rescue ship with my new grabby thingies (my new favorite part). My plan was to get to the mun orbit, grab the ship with Jeb, take him back home, then let go so he can land using his own still functioning parachutes and landing gear while the rescue ship can go crash and burn because it's unmanned.

I built the ship, sent it up, got it into Munar orbit...then realized I was going the wrong direction.

The ship I want to rescue is going around the way the red arrow is pointing, while the rescue ship is traveling with the blue arrow (headed behind the Mun).

How do I turn this ship around?

[LethalDose]

I guess what I'm confused about is the process of getting Jeb out of the old orbiting craft and into a new one without flying off into space. My only ladder tech right now is the ladder system planted on the ship, not the extendable one. My worry is that even if i somehow manage to get the new ship lined up with the old one, at the exact same speed and orbit, I don't have a method of moving him into the new ship.

That ship will work for your rescue, too. I think you should have the "Octo" probe core with that tech. Just put it between the capsule and chute, and you should be fine. Otherwise, replace your chute with a stayputnik and place a radial chute.

And it sounds like you're going to get a crash course (no pun intended) in orbital rendezvous. Be aware, some players find this to be one of the trickier parts of the game. There are some good online tutorials for details. In short, the easiest way to do it, IMO, is as follows:

1. Get the rescue vehicle into a stable, roughly circular orbit around the Mun
   
2. Target the vehicle being rescued
   
3. You should see little markers on your orbit now labeled AN and DN.
   
4. Create a maneuver node at one of these markers and use the purple icons on the node to adjust your orbit's inclination up and down. Do this until you get the AN & DN's to read "0^o"
   
5. Execute that maneuver
   
6. adjust your orbit so the rescue vehicle's Pe so it just touches the target's orbit in one place, preferably as a tangent.
   
7. Create a maneuver node at the Pe and adjust your prograde and retrograde (green icons) until you get a nice close intercept at the Pe
   
8. Execute that maneuver
   
9. When you're getting near to the intercept, click on the navball display until you see it say "Target"
   
10. Line up your rescue vehicle's heading on to green "retrograde" icon (this is now the direction opposite your target is traveling).
    
11. At the intercept, burn at that green retrograde icon until your velocity is near zero. It'll start moving around when the speed gets low, so be ready!
    
12. Now your vessels should be very near each other moving at similar speeds. Switch over to the stranded vessel.
    
13. Get Jeb out, grab your science, and spacewalk over to the rescue vessel
    
14. Grab the ladder on the pod
    
15. Enter the vessel
    
16. Head home
    

If you need help at any point, Just put a new post. Best of luck!

[Qbr12]

If you need help at any point, Just put a new post. Best of luck!

Thanks for the offer. It seems like i'll need it.

I managed to get the rescue ship into a circular orbit at approximately the same altitude as the stranded ship, as well as angling them so the circles are virtually touching. Unfortunately, the AN and DN nodes are saying 180 which I assume means they are trying to tell me "180 is half of a circle, you are exactly the OPPOSITE of where you need to be." I cant seem to get any projected paths from targeting nodes to turn my ship around, and i'm afraid to just try stuff because I don't want to run out of fuel (that's what got me into this position in the first place.)

Am I screwed? Should I revert the mission and do it all over again, but take off angling west to reverse the direction of my orbiting? Or can I just turn around with some secret technique the internet has been hiding from me?

[Sirrobert]

I'm in a similar predicament. I managed to get Jeb on the Mun, and into a stable orbit around the Mun, but he has no fuel to direct himself home. I was hoping to send some sort of rescue vehicle to bring him back home (or even just get his ship into a decaying orbit around Kerbin, as his chutes and landing gear are all still operational), but I'm afraid my current tech level is woefully inadequate. I was hoping someone could point me to a guide, or explain how to do something like this.

Here's my tech tree, my current rocket design, and poor Jeb's stranded ship.

https://imgur.com/a/HjahD

Can you tell us how you flew that to orbit? I'm not sure, but it looks like that ship should have more than enough fuel

Well now i know.

...But before I didn't know that so I sent an unmanned rescue ship with my new grabby thingies (my new favorite part). My plan was to get to the mun orbit, grab the ship with Jeb, take him back home, then let go so he can land using his own still functioning parachutes and landing gear while the rescue ship can go crash and burn because it's unmanned.

https://i.imgur.com/kgkmqlo.jpg

I built the ship, sent it up, got it into Munar orbit...then realized I was going the wrong direction.

https://i.imgur.com/6HkJAtA.jpg

The ship I want to rescue is going around the way the red arrow is pointing, while the rescue ship is traveling with the blue arrow (headed behind the Mun).

How do I turn this ship around?

That's a very inovetive design, very smart.

However there is one problem with your design: Because the claws are on the sides, it would be impossible to line up the center of mass of the combined ships. And thus, it would be impossible to control. For the future, put the Claw on top, and the probe body somewhere else (you'll get inline probe bodys soon enough, so that should not be a problem).

Though even with this ship you can still salvage your stranded ship: After you are connected, pump all fuel from the rescue probe into the stranded ship. Now you have enough in the rescue ship to take it home. You can than abandon the probe.

Turning a ship around is extremely expencive fuel wise. You'd have to cancel out it's orbital velocity, and than speed up again in the desired direction.

Always make sure your predicted orbit is going in the right direction before you enter the SOI. It's easy to change when you are still far away (this also, is something you will learn in time)

[cantab]

I managed to get the rescue ship into a circular orbit at approximately the same altitude as the stranded ship, as well as angling them so the circles are virtually touching. Unfortunately, the AN and DN nodes are saying 180 which I assume means they are trying to tell me "180 is half of a circle, you are exactly the OPPOSITE of where you need to be."

Oh no! Yes, this means you're going in exactly the opposite orbit to what you want. In other words, you've put your rescue ship in the single WORST position!

I do think that at this point your best option is to relaunch the rescue ship. Launch normally into Kerbin orbit then transfer to the Mun, then arrange a mid-course correction about halfway to the Mun so your Mun periapsis is on the correct side of the Mun and near the equator. You can make another course correction upon entering the Mun's SOI, using radial and normal components, if you need or want.

But if you do want to reverse your orbit, or generally make a big inclination chance, the most fuel-efficient approach is to:

* Burn at the ascending or descending node to raise your apoapsis as high as you can without escaping.

* Fix your inclination at apoapsis.

* Burn retrograde at periapsis (or aerobrake when possible) to bring your orbit back down.

Bear in mind this is time-consuming, so may not be an option for those running life-support mods.

[LethalDose]

Yeah... I guess I should have said the orbit should be in the same direction... as Cantab pointed out, the 180 inclination indicator means you're orbiting the wrong way...

There's no shame in launching another rescue.

I think you're better off using a rescue vessel with a pod instead of the grappler. I'm worried you're going to have trouble actually getting grappled with what you've posted. If you CAN get grappled, I'd recommend transferring fuel to Jeb's pod, ungrappling, and flying just his pod home, instead of trying to fly the whole shabang back. In the future, I'd recommend placing your RCS on just the main 90 degree markers, and on both sides of your vessels center of mass. WHen you start docking with the translation controls, you'll understand why.

[Qbr12]

So I terminated the old ship and launched a new one: Mun Rescue Mk2. This one features a fork shaped claw placement platform. Hopefully I can grab the ship, give it all my fuel, then let Jeb fly himself home.

So I got to the Mun, and I'm going the correct way around this time. I've managed to get into a pretty similar orbit, with only a 0.6 degree difference in angles.

What now though? My rescue ship is facing retrograde to look back at Jeb's ship, screaming as loud as its little sputnik voice can yell "come to me!". Unfortunately, Jeb can't come to me. We seem to be stuck perpetually moving around the Mun at a fixed distance from each other. If I slow down to let Jeb catch me, my orbit changes. If I speed up to catch Jeb, my orbit changes. How do I catch Jeb?

[AlexinTokyo]

What you'll need to do here is set up a rendezvous. This is one of the more difficult (and IMHO far and away the most useful) skills in the game.

The easiest way to do it from your current position is as follows:

1. At about where the two orbits cross, about where the orange (or purple) marker without the dotted tail is, place a maneuver node and pull on the prograde handle. This will extend your orbit out above the orbit of Jeb's ship.
   
2. Watch the orange and purple markers (the 'closest approach' markers). They will gradually converge on a point of the orbit. Note that the marker without the tail is where you will be at closest approach, and the one with the tail is where your target will be.
   
3. Adjust the maneuver until the closest approach is under about 10 km and the target position marker is just in front of your position marker.
   
4. Execute the maneuver.
   
5. When you get around the orbit to the point of closest approach, if all went as planned, you will be near the target, approaching from behind and overtaking.
   
6. If it hasn't already, switch your navball to target mode (click on the window that shows your speed, until it reads "Target") The navball now shows your speed and direction of travel relative to the selected target.
   
7. Rotate your ship until the retrograde marker () and the target retrograde marker () are both visible.
   
8. If you burn near, but not directly towards, the retrograde marker, it will be 'pushed' away from your heading marker on the navball. Use this to 'push' the retrograde marker directly on top of the target retrograde marker.
   
9. At this point, you are travelling directly towards the target at the speed shown in the navball's speed display.
   
10. Continue to make small adjustment burns to keep the markers aligned, and monitor the distance to target and closing speed. As you get closer, be sure to reduce the closing speed (as a rule of thumb, about 10% of the distance in meters is a safe closing speed, so at 2 km out try for about 20 m/s, at 100 m separation you should be down to about 1 m/s)
    
11. Once you are very close to the target (under about 100 m) reduce the closing speed to as close to 0 m/s as possible.
    
12. Congratulations, you have just rendezvoused two objects in space!
    

Once you get to this point, you should be able to use the rescue ship's RCS to 'spear' Jeb's pod with one of the claws and effect your rescue.

Hope this helps, feel free to ask if you'd like me to clarify anything at all.

[cantab]

Unfortunately, Jeb can't come to me. We seem to be stuck perpetually moving around the Mun at a fixed distance from each other. If I slow down to let Jeb catch me, my orbit changes. If I speed up to catch Jeb, my orbit changes. How do I catch Jeb?

The short answer is: By changing your orbit! Drop into a lower orbit and you'll have a shorter orbital period, boost into a higher orbit and you'll have a longer orbital period. The longer answer is given above.

[Sirrobert]

Welcome to your first lesson in truely manipulating orbits.

Rendevous and docking is the hardest part of KSP, so when you get this right, you'll have taken a very big step towards going to other planets.

Now, because of the Claw, docking is going to be easier than it normally would. Normally you'd have to perfectly align the docking ports on both ships and touch them tougether at max 1m/s. With the Claw, you can just hit the target ship with the (extended) Claw at that speed, no need to fiddle around where exactly you are going to dock

Good luck